6th July 2017 – Poole Library FUN LOL

Turns out I inherited my unusual book smelling fondness from my mum. I don’t know about you but my favourite kind of books are the Where’s Wally/Where’s Waldo books, especially this one. It’s like a sensation for your eyes and it smells directly of my childhood! HOORAY! MAN I’M VERY WEIRD THINKING ABOUT IT

‘Where’s Wally?’ always seemed funny to me. It was localized in some places as ‘Where’s Waldo?’, which is a weird enough localization, but then his nemesis Odlaw was Odlaw everywhere. Feels a bit gaslight-ish to me.

Fun fact! That book smell? It’s the books literally burning themselves. Book printed from around 1900 to 1990, (IN the US, might be different elsewhere,) were printed on acidic paper. It was cheap. The downside is the acid is slowly burning the rest of the materials. It’s why paperbacks from the mid twentieth century are super yellow and brittle above and beyond the smell. Books before 1900 used higher quality paper and after 1990 publishers generally stopped using it because it also was harmful to the environment.

So eventual books you print will probably never smell like that on their own!